Last night we had Matt & Maz around for dinner, a lovely roasted piece of pork shoulder from Urban Food Market, served with roast potatoes, onions and turnips. For a sauce to accompany the pork I'd stumbled upon this recipe which used cinammon and sage to flavour an apple sauce. I've never been a big fan of generic apple sauce with pork. It's normally just a sweet apple mush and never seems to quite go with pork. But this recipe intrigued me.
The sauce I made start out simmering four peeled and cored granny smith apples, a bit of Scott's excellent Tasmanian cider, a cinammon quill and some ripped up sage leaves for about 40 minutes. I then fished out the aromatics and squished it all to a pulp. Next I added a little powdered vegetable stock and a little more cider to loosen it up. Finally, while the roast was resting I deglazed the roasting pan with a bit more cider and poured that in.
The pan juices took it from a generic apple mush to a light brown gravy colour, and pushed the flavour through the roof. An unctuous and slightly sweet but still highly savoury gloop that just shouted porky appleness to your tastebuds.
Our guests, Matt and Maz, asked for bread to mop up the sauce. That's the best compliment you can get for a sauce.
I've got an absolutely amazing rack of pork from the same source sitting in the freezer. I'll try and codify this recipe a bit more when I cook that. Try and get some pictures too.